It did not take long for Earth to fade from view and as it did, it summoned a sense of finality. There was no use in fighting anymore. Blair was on this spaceship going God knows where and that’s how it was. It had all seemed to go fine on Earth, all wars had ended, most weapons had been disassembled and reused. All was fine, but then the UK started to panic, used all its resources to build a hundred spaceships and urged the people of Earth to board them and before anyone could ask what was going on, they were already shot on their merry way.
Blair wondered what the people still on Earth were doing. A considerable chunk of humanity had been blasted into space but the majority was still there. Life could probably go on as usual, with better traffic and less unemployment.
Blair’s parents belonged to the group of people that thought that whatever got the UK so riled up must be serious, if they’re willing to drop everything to leave Earth. And they dropped everything just the same, travelled from Japan to London to board this ship and didn’t listen to their teenage daughter protesting that it was asinine, that everything was fine on Earth… Well, was it? She probably would never learn.
These ships did their best to seem homely. They were massive discs with biological landscapes on them, hills with grass, rivers, lakes, towns to live in, each thing about as large as a big town. Truly a marvel of technology to have build a hundred of these in such short time, but it felt like a perfect recreation of a lollipop that only copied the visuals and tasted like bland plastic.
A huge glass dome secured this place from the deadly void outside and let the people see the stars above. Blair was never into stargazing but it still made her sad that everything in the night sky would be fleeting from then on, gone before anyone could see a pattern.
“There you are.”
Blair could tell the voice was her mother’s and didn’t move her eyes away from the sky. She sat down next to her on the artificial hill.
There was nothing for either of them to say. They both had to leave people behind. They both had no answers for any questions. All they could do was hope that this had been the right choice. They would likely die on this spaceship before it would reach another planet that could sustain human life.
“The constellations, can you see them? Are they still there?”
Her mother looked up. After a while she pointed up and said: “I can see the north star.”
“It’s the one that shines a little brighter, right?” Blair tried to find it too.
A blue wave dashed across the sky, like a thunder.
“What the hell?” Blair sat up but didn’t take her eyes off the sky. “Was that… space lightning?”
Her mother seemed concerned with something else: “Did you… notice anything else?”
Blair checked above again but couldn’t find anything.
“The north star… it’s gone!”
Blair looked up. No… this was not the sky she had been looking up to just moments ago.